2019 Civic Engagement Institute Registration Now Open!

January 15, 2019

The annual Campus Compact for Wisconsin Civic Engagement Institute (CEI) is a time for community and civic engagement professionals, faculty, and administrators to get together, reflect on their work, learn about cutting-edge practices and news ways to conduct their work, and discuss important topics related to strengthening the civic infrastructure on college campuses. The landscape of higher education funding and the economic impact of colleges on communities in the state of Wisconsin are changing, and campus leaders gather at the Institute to consider ways that colleges and universities may improve the quality of community life through civic engagement, produce solutions in a changing economy, and assess and document impact on student learning.


2019 Civic Engagement Institute
March 21 & 22, 2019
Alverno College

Registration: Registration is now open and closes on Friday, March 8, 2019.

Call for Proposals: The Call for Proposals is now open. Proposals are due Friday, February 8, 2019.

Annual Awards Nominations: Nominations for the CCWI Annual Awards are currently being accepted. Nominations are due Friday, January 25, 2019.

Newman Civic Fellows: Nominations for the 2019-2020 Newman Civic Fellows are currently being accepted.Nominations are due Friday, February 1, 2019.

Keynote Speaker: Join us on Friday to hear from Harry Boyte, Senior Scholar in Public Work Philosophy at the Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship at Augsburg University. Harry will speak to “Higher Education Community Engagement and the Future of Work – A Challenge and an Opportunity.”

Harry C. Boyte is the founder of the international youth civic education initiative Public Achievement and co-founder with Marie Ström of the Public Work Academy. He also founded the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the University of Minnesota, now merged into the Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship at Augsburg University where he is Senior Scholar in Public Work Philosophy. He has coordinated a variety of educational, civic, business and philanthropic civic groups, including those that worked with both the Clinton White House Domestic Policy Council and the Obama 2008 campaign. Boyte’s forthcoming book, “Awakening Democracy through Public Work” (Vanderbilt University Press 2018), recounts lessons from 30 years of work aimed at empowering young people and others and revitalizing the civic purposes of K-12, higher education, professions, governments, development work and other settings.

Pre-Institute Sessions: New this year, we are hosting two pre-institute sessions on Thursday:

1) Deliberative Dialogue Training. Join Leslie Garvin, Executive Director for North Carolina Campus Compact for this pre-institute session from 1:00 – 4:30pm on Thursday, March 21. A Deliberative Dialogue Forum brings people together in a small gathering to deliberate for a few hours about challenging public issues. The process is guided by a neutral moderator and a discussion guide that presents multiple approaches to addressing the problem. This method was developed and promoted by the National Issues Forum (NIF). Moderator training includes an understanding of deliberation, an overview of the four components of a forum, and engagement in two practice forums. Participants receive strategies and sample questions for moderating a forum, as well as tips and tools for effective moderating.

2) Community Colleges as Civic Power Plants. Join Verdis Robinson, Director of Community College Engagement for Campus Compact for this pre-institute session from 1:00-4:30pm on Thursday, March 21. Inspired by Eric Liu’s You Are More Powerful Than You Think and his notion of civic power, this interactive workshop will introduce the concept of community colleges as “Civic Power Plants” generating power in the civic life of their students and campuses. How can community colleges harness their true public purpose by educating for democracy and sending it out to making a difference in the civic lives of the community that they serve? This workshop will feature an immersive role-playing exercise, a presentation on model programs from a diversity of community colleges, and a brainstorm/action planning session.